First time using multiple monitors

I'm just dipping a toe into multi-monitor use and have some questions.

I have a 24 inch, and a 17 inch monitor at the moment (have another 17 and 19 to use if need be later) I have a 5870 ATI card. I have both monitors plugged into the video card.

I've noticed when I extend the desktop to both screens I have some "flickering" on the second 17 inch monitor. Almost like its trying to adjust itself to something automatically. It only flickers when I scroll the mouse wheel up and down a page or move a window around, etc. Seems to happen when one screen has a browser at full screen and something might be leaking over to the other screen, not sure if I can explain it better than that.

When I create an eyefinity group even though the monitors are different I see no flickering at all, all is well.

Just wondering if this is some setting on the smaller monitor I need to look into? Its a Dell 1704FPV.

ALSO, I am assuming this videocard with two monitors on it may take a performance hit if I use it while gaming? For example have the 24 inch be the gamer monitor and have the 17 inch showing the desktop with a browser window, or teamspeak on it?

Also, I'm looking through my parts here and I have some older video cards I may look into adding one just for the second monitor on the desktop. Thoughts?
 
im no expert but it could be your refresh rate on the second monitor is different from the first so that could be it,

1.go to control panel under appearance and personalization click adjust screen resolution

2.click the monitor you want to change

3.click advanced setting and monitor tab and change the refresh rate

and your gaming fps should not go down through the multi display set up unless your doing something graphic/cpu demanding task
 
I discovered after checking all the obvious items that the amd video card was set to "overdrive" and disabling that made the flicker go away.
 
Back